Free Mobile TV Due in 2010

Free, mobile television will finally hit laptops, iPhones and Droids in 2010, the head of the Open Mobile Video Coalition confidently told PCMag.com as the organization prepared to demonstrate a wide variety of free-TV solutions at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.

"Broadcasters are forming groups to announce national rollouts," OMVC president Anne Schelle said. More than 35 stations are already online, with five in Las Vegas doing demonstrations at CES. Stations in 96 of the top 100 US markets have signed up to broadcast mobile TV, according to the OMVC.

ION Media Networks, for instance, plans to have 10 major markets on the air by mid-2010, according to Brett Jenkins, ION's VP of technology. ION owns stations in all of the top 20 US markets.

How free mobile TV works
Right now, there is no such thing as free mobile TV. Wireless carriers offer subscription-based streaming solutions, and MediaFLO USA has a basic-cable-like system with about a dozen channels that they charge $10-15/month for.

We first saw Mobile DTV, the OMVC's free solution, last year at CES. But the buildout is sticking to schedule, with demos now and sales in early 2010, Schelle said.

Mobile DTV uses part of broadcasters' existing spectrum to transmit programming directly to handheld devices. Each local TV station gets 19.2 megabits to play with, Schelle said. A 416x240 Mobile DTV signal takes about 2-3 megabits to transmit. According to Schelle, an HD signal takes 12-15 megabits, and an SD signal takes 4-6. But advances in MPEG2 encoding mean you can fit more channels into the same spectrum than you used to, Jenkins said.

"We feel we can do an HD [channel] with a couple of SD multicasts and still have room to do two or three reasonable quality mobile broadcasts," Jenkins said.

Mobile DTV is cheap for stations to implement, with installations costing $75,000-$150,000 and taking "one guy, two hours" to plug into existing broadcast systems, Schelle said.

New TV gadgets at CES
The OMVC is showing LG DVD players with built-in TV receivers, a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 laptop, and a variety of USB dongles. But the most exciting TV gadget here is the Valups Tivit, a battery-operated receiver that can transmit TV via Wi-Fi to iPhones, Android phones or BlackBerrys. Your phone views the TV signal in its Web browser, as streaming video.

The Tivit will have about three hours of battery life and will go on sale this spring for $90-120, the OMVC said.

The LG DP570 Mobile Digital TV/DVD player, with a 7-inch screen and stereo speakers, will cost $249. That's the same amount as MediaFLO's portable TV  and the LG device includes a DVD player, and its TV service is free.

Mobile DTV will fit into phones just like MediaFLO does today, Schelle said, but the only DTV phones at CES are some LG prototypes that aren't retail units. They look impressive, but they're just technology demos.

"I think phones are going to play a role," Jenkins said. "The handset business is a little more complicated, and cell phones with built-in chips may be a longer time in coming."

TV stations initially intend to simulcast their regular TV signals over mobile. There are some rights issues involved, but stations will work those out, Schelle said.

"So if you're watching your primetime TV at home, you can walk out the door and continue to watch your primetime TV," Schelle said.

Local news and children's programming will be especially appealing to mobile consumers, Jenkins said.

More than just TV
The Mobile DTV platform can be used for a lot more than just standard TV. An OMVC white paper from September shows how mobile DTV can be used for news radio broadcasts, short videos on demand, or mobile DVR functionality. Of course, we've been hearing the potential for mobile datacasting and DVRs for years and it hasn't come to pass yet.

Interactivity, such as clicking on commercials to jump through to Web sites, will come later down the line, Schelle said. Ditto for subscription services; although most mobile DTV channels will be free, they won't all be. But don't worry - ION's Jenkins says there's a future in free TV.

"The business works on an ad-supported basis," he said, "largely because it's inexpensive for us to get into mobile broadcasting. We've sliced and diced that."

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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